Now, investigative journalist Julie Ivy Rose finds herself unraveling the mysteries of the past as an ancient evil lays claim to her city. Police officer Ben Docks - a man she's always considered trouble with a capital "T" - quickly becomes her best ally, though the dark sexual heat he sends her way suggests that he'd rather be more. Much more.
Armed only with Ben's strange dreams, a mysterious Blade and Julie's unusually perceptive instinct, the pair are thrust to the forefront of a shadow war and must stand against an enemy far greater than either of them could have imagined.
Julie and Ben will find out what decisions they can live with, and what sacrifices they cannot live without.

There's nothing about me that I recognize anymore. This is a
good thing. I didn't like that woman, have no interest in knowing
her. The only thing that matters is him. His wants, his needs.
When he's inside me like this, I can forget everything. It's a
gift he's given me, this freedom. I can get lost inside him,
though there are still places he won't let me go.

He won't let me go. Ever.

I hate myself and love him in turns, this beast in my bed. I
have ripped myself open for him, cast off who I was, that useless
girl. Here, I know true power. Hatred. Rage. Purity. Here, I have
made my greatest, and my darkest, sacrifice. I tumble into deep
sleep and live there among my trees, hiding from myself. Because
if I ever find her, the part of me that brought me here,

I'll kill her.

Forward.

Like every little girl, I loved fairy tales. Not the
princess-type stuff, either. I never wanted to be royalty. The
stories I liked best were the ones with monsters. I'd take trolls
over dresses any day. But you need to know what I know now, what
we should have never forgotten: that those monsters are very
real. And they want to kill you. They tried to kill me, and in
some ways they did.

This is a love story, at its heart. But very much like love, it's
built of trials and error, death and renewal. It has roots deeper
than you can imagine, until you've tested them. If you've loved
someone or lost someone, then you know. If you hang on hard
enough, if you fight long enough, love and life give back
everything you put into them. Never forget that.

Even when the lights go out, even when you think there's nothing
left…keep fighting.

-JIR

Prologue.

Long after the last shafts of light had withdrawn their sharp
edges from the dark, I arrived. A gentle rap on the door, a
genteel smile, a lie, and the woman quivered before me. I pressed
her fleshy hands to my lips, the white doughy mass carrying the
stale scent of her home.

She hesitates only once, when she sees my eyes. A modicum of
instinct, that fascinating devil that had been bred out of her,
resists me. For a sliver of time, she is something else entirely,
of use. I smile again and the spell is broken; she stands before
me, mascara gathered at the corners of her watery eyes, cheeks
flushed with pleasure, her attention fixed to me as a dog to its
owner as I let myself into her home. My sudden disgust angers me.
Are there none left?!

Her home was as unpleasant to the eye as it was the nose. The
space was cluttered with tacky furniture. The armchair she
gestured towards, that I may sit, wasn't fit to touch me. I hid
my disgust behind a practiced veneer of interest.

"Ricky should be home any minute now," Sarah assured me,
straightening out the t-shirt she wore. Her eyes wandered over my
clothing, absorbing the quality. My effect on women is remarkably
more evident in fine fabrics and pleasant colors, which draw the
eye - but in truth my attire is not what they are attracted to.
It is my strength, my beast, my supremacy that makes them bat
their lashes and blush before me like maids, when it is that very
element of my nature that should make them tremble in fear, as
they would have centuries past. She should have been begging me
for her life the instant she saw me. She should have seen the
creature in my eyes, taken her own life and granted herself the
mercy. I have none.

"Plenty of time," I smiled, and her own smile faltered.

"For-?" the blood leaves her face when three of my men step
through the door and into the small house, their presence filling
the room with hungry energy.

"We will wait for the boy," I informed my men, "but the other
child is useless." I smile again at Sarah and exhaled the scent
of her infant. The woman had been frozen in horror, but at my
words she lunged for me, hands outstretched like the claws of an
animal. A mistake.

"You won't touch her!" She screamed, but the cry was cut
off by my hand on her throat.

"I will leave you your daughter. You need only name the locations
of the Gifts."

"The what?"

My grip tightened.

"Tell me," I demanded in a whisper. She offered no more words and
tried to pry my hand from her throat. As her attempts grew more
feeble, as the need for oxygen sent her into an unconsciousness
from which she would never wake, her eyes mocked with humor not
her own.

"You will never find them." The words poured from her
mouth and burned in our ears, the power deafening. I threw her
from me.

"Bind and gag her." My heart was light as I said the words,
because I knew I was close. I would soon know that power, would
carry the Gifts as my own.

That night, I again watched flesh twist and erupt, black blood
fill throats, lungs and hallways and the desperate dimming eyes
of a creature that learned of death and met that reaper in one
breath.

And later, when the carnage was done, I called out to my
adversary. The game we were playing was growing tiresome. He was
close. I could feel him.

"What are you waiting for, Hunter?"

I was answered only by the splash of blood as it dripped to the
floor in the slow rhythm of a clock ticking. The pulse of death.

-A.

Year 750 Ui Thuirtre, Aiirgialla (Present-Day Northern
Ireland)

"I did not exist until your eyes found mine. Before my heart
loved yours I knew nothing. I have been born to love you forever,
and I ask only your love in return."

His heart thumped in his chest as he said the words. He was
grateful for having already knelt before his beloved, for had he
been standing she would have seen him tremble. This woman had his
heart in her hands, and had always held it with the gentlest care
that only she could give. For Daegan, there was never any other
and when she smiled, naught else mattered. She accepted his hand
and in soft sighs and warm breaths their tears intermingled as
they embraced.